Tag: review

Welcome to the “Wilbur Reviews”! Wilbur is our 7 month old, 11kg, crossbreed puppy, and the purpose of these reviews is to show people the different food toys that are available to keep our four-legged friends busy. Not only that, but we’ll let you know what we think of them, what types of food they work well for, and in some cases the things we don’t like about them.

For our first Wilbur Review we thought we’d show you the Buster Cube, because that’s what Wilbur is eating his breakfast from as I type. The Buster Cube is a very solid, hollow plastic cube with a round opening on one side. It comes in 2 sizes, and 4 different colours. Wilbur has the mini size, in the pink colour (randomly selected by the eBay seller). The mini size cost about $15 delivered, there are LOTS of online sellers to choose from.

What can you put in a Buster Cube?

The Buster Cube is good for dry food and treats only, you cannot use it for wet food. It has a fairly large capacity, which means that i could fit Wilbur’s whole 1/2 to 3/4 cup of breakfast into the one toy if i wanted. To fill the toy you drop the food in the hole and shake the food down. There is a plastic cylinder through the centre of the toy, which makes the food harder to get out – it also makes it harder to get the food in! I mostly put dry biscuits in Wilbur’s Buster Cube, and i’ll sometimes add in a few dry treats too as little surprises.

How does the dog get the treats out?

Wilbur’s standard approach to most dry-food toys is to push them with his paws and nose. This causes the Buster Cube to roll around, and as it tumbles on its different sides the food falls through the cylinder piece by piece. Wilbur has the most success with this toy on a hard flood, such as indoors or on the patio, and when he plays with the Buster Cube on these surfaces the treats come out in all directions as the toy spins around. Wilbur also picks the toy up in his mouth and throws it, which is another successful way to get treats to fall out. In our home this is a HIGH ACTIVITY toy, and there is a lot of running, pouncing, swatting, and throwing involved. The only downside of this is that the hard plastic is very loud on the tiles! Compared to some of our other toys (to be revealed in future posts) this toy takes a long time for Wilbur to empty, up to 20 minutes if it doesn’t get stuck beside the fridge or under our blue-tongue lizards tank.

How do you clean it?

Cleaning is a bit of a downside. The cube doesn’t come apart, which means the only way to clean it is to rinse it and leave it to dry. But it isn’t too much of a problem as nothing wet or sticky goes in the cube anyway.

Overall

This one is definitely a winner with Wilbur, and it isn’t too much hassle to fill it when you consider how much food you can put in there and how long it lasts. I love how active it keeps Wilbur, and it is hilarious to watch him in action. I would highly recommend this toy to other dog owners, especially for dogs that have experience with other toys that need to be pushed and rolled to get biscuits out – this one is just a little harder which is great!